


Who's There?

by Kalliopestarmist (KalliopeStarmist)



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Bonding, Knock-Knock Jokes, Late Night Conversations, M/M, traumatized AI units
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 22:09:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5887201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KalliopeStarmist/pseuds/Kalliopestarmist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wyoming is uniquely suited to taking care of his particular AI.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Reg woke with a start, arm reaching for his pistol in the dark bunk. The room was quiet, and he locked the door securely each night, but there was a… a tickle, in the back of Reg’s brain, like someone had a feather duster to his amygdala. “Who’s there?”

“No one,” his AI unit answered in the back of his mind without appearing. “Just me. Go back to sleep.”

No one could sleep through this. “See, the thing about having you in my head…”

“Everything is fine. Go back to sleep.”

“Mmm. Fine, I’ll sleep.” Physically impossible. The tickle wouldn’t let up. And it hadn’t been like this earlier, either. No way. He would have told the counselor to take his damned computer program and shove it. “Everything doesn’t feel fine. What’s keeping you up?”

“I am taking care of it,” Gamma said in his digital monotone. He might have been annoyed. Reg figured that reading him would get easier over time.

“See, now I’m worried. What is it you’re taking care of?”

“Nothing. Everything is fine. You are safe. I am also safe. AI require different rest patterns than humans, that is all,” Gamma said quickly, for him. The tickling became more frantic, almost painful. Ah, so that was what agitation felt like. 

“Defragging in your down time?” Reg suggested gently. 

“Yes.” The AI grasped at the excuse with an instantaneous feeling of relief. Maybe that- no, no, the light tingle that had woken him in the first place was still there. “I am defragging. Go to sleep.”

“Cheers, Gamma.” Goddamn AI was hyper vigilant. Ok, well, that figures. God knew Reg had met enough humans to recognize it. The question was, did they know about the old squadmates and partners and drinking buddies? Was that how they made these matches? And did he even want to know how the hell did you made a computer scared to sleep?

And the tickling would not let up. He could pull the unit and get some sleep solo, of course. That would earn him just an entire boatload of trust for their training. And it would do marvels for his place in the project, probably. Oh, they said they didn’t monitor you while you were sleeping, that it was mission performance that counted, but what was Reg, new?

He kept his eyes closed, but whispered, “Knock knock.”

“You need to sleep,” Gamma’s answer came immediately. 

“Knock knock,” Reg insisted, undeterred.

The AI hesitated, like a micro-sigh. He’d crack G’s emotional code yet. “Who is there?”

“Banana.”

“Banana who?” Gamma asked obediently.

“Knock knock.”

“Who is there?”

“Banana.”

“Banana-,”

“Knock knock.”

“Who is there?” Same monotone as always. It was nice to play off a straight man who didn’t seem capable of groaning. Next time he partnered with North, he would have to bring that up.

“Banana.”

“Banana who?”

“Knock knock.”

“Who is there?”

“Orange.”

“Orange who?”

Reg smiled, but didn’t laugh over the punchline. “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”

The tickling sensation eased, back to just the regular discomfort you might expect if you were sharing brain space with a roommate. After a few moments, Gamma… laughed, Reg supposed you would call it.

“Ha. Ha. I like that.”

“Glad someone on this ship has a sense of humor.”

“Orange you glad I did not say banana,” the AI repeated, as if this was some witticism to be savored. “Orange you glad. I did not say banana.”

Reg flipped his pillow over to the cold side and laid his head back down.

“Wyoming,” Gamma waited until he just closed his eyes.

“Yes?”

“Tell another.”

Reg made a show of sighing heavily, but he suspected that the consciousness hardwired into his brain knew it was an act. “Oh, all right. Knock knock.”

“Who is there?”

“Annie.”

“Annie who?”

“Annie one going to let me in? It’s cold out here.”

“Ha. Ha.”

“Goodnight, Gamma.”

“They did not tell me you were funny.”

“No, they wouldn’t have. Philistines,” Reg muttered, keeping his eyes closed. “Are you done compiling? I’m going to go to sleep.”

“Yes. I am done compiling. You should sleep. I like you, Wyoming.”

“Thanks, Gamma. I like you, too.”

“I will make sure you are killed last. Good night.”

“Wait what-” Gamma had logged off or gone to sleep or whatever AIs did. Fabulous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I refuse to live in a world where only the 'good' fragments have anxiety.


	2. CP who?

“Wyoming. Knock knock.”

It was a few peaceful nights since Gamma had learned his first knock knock joke and Reg was wide awake and had been for hours, courtesy of the unrelenting stream of neural input that was digitized insomnia. “Who's there?”

“CP”

“CP who?”

“No, thank you, I am already very efficient.”

“Um.” He wanted to laugh and validate the feeling of pride Gamma was sending his way. He really did. But it was too late (early? It was early by now) for bluffing.

“I am already very efficient.”

“I heard you, Gamma,” Reg mumbled.

His AI contemplated this while Wyoming tried to get back to sleep, before finally saying, “Maybe it is too advanced for a human mind.”

“Yes,” Wyoming agreed groggily. “Maybe.”

“Is Texas in the vicinity?” Gamma suggested after a moment and dear God, could he just have one bloody hour of blessed peace to sleep? Only an hour, that was all he asked. “You could tell her.”

“It's too late tonight, old boy, we can tell her and Omega in the morning.” He didn't want to think what Texas- well any of his teammates, but especially Texas, would do if he woke them up to listen to a nonsensical children's joke, and anyway _Mother of Invention_ ’s heating systems were turned down in off hours and his bed was so very warm.

“She is awake. And it is against protocol to talk to other units at breakfast.”

Reg groaned as he realized that it would be impossible to let his AI talk to Omega in the middle of the mess where anyone could see the protocol breach. And  while Reginald was all for disregarding anything that spoiled his partner’s fun (or sleep schedule, as the case may be), he was also not in the habit of flagrantly disobeying direct orders over his morning cuppa. And that meant Gamma was indeed right, there was only one way to reconcile these two impulses. He reached for his bathrobe, hoping Tex had a forgiving mood and that she could be in it.

 

* * *

 

Once he stumbled up to the metal door with the right name plate, he knocked as softly as humanly possible, eschewing the buzzer in order to convince Gamma that he was making an effort without actually, you know, putting his life at risk. “She's asleep, old chap, let's go back to bed,” he whispered immediately when nobody answered, turning back towards his nice warm bunk.

“She is awake,” Gamma insisted.

“Who is it?” floated out through the door, right on cue.

“She is awake.”

“Yes, I hear her,” he said, before pressing his mouth close to the door. “It's Reggie. My AI wants to see you and Omega.”

The door opened a hair, so he could just see Tex’s visor in the dimmed hall light. “Christ, Wyoming, it's four in the morning.”

“Yet here you are in full power armor.”

“You can sleep in power armor,” she muttered, sliding the door open anyway. “What do you want?”

“Gamma is learning knock knock jokes.  Asked to tell yours one.”

Tex looked around like she was waiting for the hidden camera crew to pop out and helpfully inform her this was a bad joke. Wyoming understood the impulse.  “A knock knock joke? It’s four fucking a.m.”

“Believe me, Allison, I _know_. Look, he really wants to talk to another AI and right now that’s you and yours. Will you humour him so I can sneak in a REM cycle before reveille?” He dipped his head in an exhausted plea, artfully letting the light catch the tired shadows under his eyes at just the right angle. Certain other Freelancers thought showing fatigue was beneath them, and those Freelancers were shortsighted buffoons who would never learn how to win friends and influence people.

Tex stepped back from the doorframe and crossed her arms, resigned. “What's the joke?”

Gamma flickered on next to his shoulder as Reg stepped into the room, a static shadow of a parrot. “Knock knock.”

Tex turned to look at her own shoulder, where you might expect an AI to materialize. When none appeared, she sighed theatrically. “Who's there?”

“CP.”

“CP who?”

“No, thank you,” Gamma monotoned with a polite nod. “I am already very efficient.”

Tex chuckled, Omega’s throaty chuff of a laugh barely audible from under her helmet.

“Wyoming did not ‘get it’,” Gamma explained. Unnecessarily, in Reg's humble opinion. They were going to have to talk about being a unified front and all that rot.

“CPU?” Tex prompted helpfully. “Like, processing power? Did they teach you anything about computers before they surgically grafted one into your brain?”

“Idiot,” added Omega from wherever he was hiding. Texas said nothing, only shifted her head ever so slightly, to face Wyoming a little more head-on. Her expression was hidden, of course, but he'd bet good money it was just as deadpan as the tilt of the helmet made it out to be.

“So, puns, huh?” she asked him wryly, once it was clear that her AI had said all he planned to on the subject. “Betcha didn’t think that’d backfire on you."

Wyoming groaned and toppled onto her bunk, letting his head fall over the far side of the mattress. “I’ve created a monster.” 

“I told you it was too advanced for a human mind,” Gamma said with a mental shrug. His hologram may have shrugged as well, but it had stayed hovering in place, just out of Tex’s reach. Wyoming was quite content to stare at the ceiling pipes instead of following his computer program’s body language.

He heard Tex snort. “Alright, I'll take pity on you. Let me see if the kids want to play,” she said, and then went silent for a moment.  A minute.  Several minutes.  In fact, it had been so long that Reg propped himself up on his elbows and gave her inert figure an experimental nudge with his foot.

“Texas. Oy, Texas. Nodding off on your feet?”

Her shoulders sagged the moment his foot connected with her thigh, rather like she had been startled awake, but she shook her head ‘no’ and Reg liked to flatter himself that he wasn't worth lying to. “Talking to Omega. Well. ‘Talking’,” she airquoted.

“Talking.”

“Arguing.”

“Remarkably quiet of you. Not in front of company, eh?”

“You'll get there. Once you've got it down, it's the not talking to them in your head that's the hard part.” Maybe he was imagining things, but she sounded just a tad bitter.

“I suppose I should bow to the tremendous expertise granted by your one extra week of experience.”

“Don't get all jealous, Gamma seems lovely. Don't girls always say they want a tactical battlefield assistant with a sense of humor?” No, she definitely sounded bitter. She also, everyone knew, wasn't about to tell him outright what the problem was. Wyoming would concede that Texas was one of the more personable Freelancers if you took the time to talk to her (or landed in a surgical recovery suite next to her while she was having her first AI interface check-up, as the case may be), but she was decidedly not much on the friend-winning/people-influencing front.

“Does Omega keep you up at night?” he ventured, hoping for a little common ground.

“No. I had the good sense not to teach him knock knock jokes.”

“I know what knock knock jokes are,” Omega snarled, manifesting next to her. Reg wasn’t sure what he had expected him to look like. Sort of Gamma-esque, he supposed, but absolutely nothing about Omega’s heavily-detailed body armor resembled the blurred humanoid that favoured pacing in front of Reg when they talked. Even the light from their holograms was different. Where Gamma’s blue leaked from his outline and lit the room, Omega seemed to almost be a void, as though his edges were a black hole, sucking the color from his surroundings. It had never occurred to Reginald that the units would have different avatars, or that they could be so… unsettling.

Texas didn’t seem to notice her AI was anything unusual. Well, she’d had the time to get used to him, if such a thing were possible. They certainly _fit_ together. Reg couldn’t picture Omega perched on anyone else’s shoulder. Mostly, though, because he knew for a fact that the other Freelancers smiled on occasion.

She tilted her head at Wyoming meaningfully, as though the ghostly hologram manifesting pure hatred next to her was a willful two-year-old she had fooled into eating his vegetables.  “Hey, Omega, you want to hang out with Gamma so Wyoming can get some sleep?”

“If the pathetic mustachioed goon can't sleep, he doesn't deserve an AI. Leave us out of it.”

“You're not worried that he's going to get an edge on us if he gets a little shut-eye, are you?” Tex shrugged the shoulder her AI was sitting on, as if batting at him playfully. Behaviour completely normal in the lockers or the loading dock, but it made Reg’s neck hair prick up, something unnatural about the gesture directed at the ominous ultraviolet soldier. Or something about Texas’ casual manner that seemed forced. He’d been joking about arguing in front of company. Now he wasn't sure.

Omega turned to stare at her, she stared back. For far, far longer than was necessary.

 _They are talking through their link,_ Gamma’s voice echoed in his head, answering a question he wasn't quite aware he had been asking. _I will attempt to teach you but do not get your hopes up. Texas and Omega are special._

“Not quite sure I do want to learn,” he whispered, watching the staring contest. “Looks a tad uncomfortable, doesn't it?”

_But it gives us an element of surprise that we might find useful._

_“_ Well, I'm open to experimentation,” Reg sighed, sinking back down on Tex’s bed and closing his eyes, shutting out whatever it was that made Omega’s avatar so disconcerting. The room was blessedly quiet. Well, so was Reg’s room, usually, but that excruciating tickling from Gamma had faded, he couldn't say when… how long had it been since he'd slept? “But in the morning, old sport. ‘S’time to sleep.”

 _Your reaction times are worryingly slow._ Gamma agreed solicitously. _Maybe sleep is best._

* * *

 

He dropped off almost immediately, but he dreamed, or half-dreamed, that the conversation carried on while he slept, the room and its occupants sketched out in lightning-bright electromagnetic shapes on a tactical overlay.

 “Ugh, lovely. Dropping an idiot on your doorstep like a goddamn cat,” growled Omega, only a blip of electric energy where his holographic interface was activated. Texas, all bright lines of current threaded through the faintest suggestion of armor, shook her head sharply in annoyance, as though trying to flick him back into her helmet.

“You’ll wake him up,” she whispered. 

“Thus the audio. Gamma, get your sycophant out of our room.”

Gamma flickered on briefly, sending a spark through Wyoming’s brain that almost jolted him out of the drowsing reverie he had slipped into. “Make me.”

“They can stay,” Tex announced, and Reg felt the smug satisfaction of a well-earned victory. She straddled the back of her standard-issue desk chair, propping her tablet against the top rail. “I'm not tired, anyway.”

What is always in power armor, proficient in all weapon types, and doesn’t sleep? A completely normal human woman. Reg snorted at his joke, even as it registered as utter nonsense in another part of his brain, and she glanced over at him. Fondly, he fancied. Marvelous, they could be friends. The thought brought a warm, safe feeling, a relief from an old anxiety.

“Gamma isn't supposed to be talking to other units,” Omega warned, although it was little more than pouting at this point, and Reg knew it, or knew it in the dream.

“Wyoming needs sleep. And nobody is supposed to know about you yet.” Texas’ helmet tilted defiantly, chin up, at her AI. Her shoulders had tensed, already-vivid lines of current brightening at the joints with the effort. “There's no reason I shouldn't have a friend and his AI over.”

He flashed off and reappeared directly in front of her, mirroring the aggressive jut of her head, the tight hunch of her shoulders. The anger sparked off of him as he leaned in close, purring so low that Reg could barely hear. “He won't like you having _friends_.”

“Let me worry about that, okay?” she snapped, turning her tablet’s dimmed screen back on with a dismissive flick of her finger. Omega snorted, unimpressed by the show, but vanished without further comment.

The bright-glowing tension in Tex’s joints remained after the room emptied. She kept the tablet balanced on the back of her chair, but scrolled down only in short, jerky bursts when the screen began to dim. If Omega had been aiming for the last word, he had certainly gotten it.

Reg had no real sense of how long she sat there, pretending to go over tank maintenance files, while her body slowly, very slowly, began to ease. He was starting to lose interest and drift off despite his dream-inclination to stare at her all night, when she stood suddenly, shaking the last of the stiffness out of her joints. She tossed a spare blanket over Wyoming’s body like a soldier firing a warning shot.

  
A second later, he felt her arrange it gently, deliberately, so that it just covered his feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per usual, Randompassingninja was very kind to read through my first draft and tell me that everything needed changing.


End file.
